GREENBERG (1999) Narrative Correspondences and the Organ of Coherence

ART and ORGANISM

presentation on narrative as a creative expression of how the two principal modes of reality-testing in the brain– correspondence and coherence–are integrated

[including discussion points]

.

PRESENTATION

National conference on “Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology and the Brain,”

TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY, LUBBOCK, TX

FEBRUARY 4-6, 1999

.

NARRATIVE CORRESPONDENCES

and the ORGAN of COHERENCE

Neil Greenberg, Ph.D., Ethology

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

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I visited the interdisciplinary colloquy that gave rise to this project as a kind of Voyeur and stayed because I sensed a deep connection between my interests and theirs — or perhaps a pleasing complementarity. I am a comparative behavioral neuroendocrinologist that studies the assembly of units of behavior into social displays (in lizards, for simplicity) – and stress endocrinology of stress and its activating effects on the nervous system. You will see these research interest ramify throughout my comments.

I have heard it said that “Philosophy is to science as pornography is to sex!”[1]

So I am here in part in an attempt to purify my thoughts. Or at least reconcile my self-indulgences.

I don’t want to speak that much of philosophy, but I want to juxtapose some philosophical ideas related to TRUTH and indirectly to NARRATIVE with some recent observations about the brain that suggest some tantalizing hopes of consilience — less in the sense that E.O. Wilson has popularized, and more in the sense that when insights from disparate disciplines appear to converge, we might be on to something.

My interest in Narrative is energized by my interest –as an ethologist that studies social displays– in the evolution of behavior, and as a neurobiologist interested in the proximate causation of these behavior patterns.

For example – I think it is useful (not necessarily correct) to consider narrative as the peacock’s tail of a cerebral sequencer

(You are probably familiar with the classic evolutionary story of how this striking social display began humbly, as a thermoregulatory reflex.)

At the center of this enterprise is a definition of NARRATIVE as an ensemble of adaptive traits that acknowledges its role as either a process or a product of human behavior. Complementing this definition is an adaptation of the traditional ethological model of the interaction of internal and external forces in causing behavior. In this model, the expression of a narrative involves a necessary externalization of inner models which may or may not evoke reciprocity with the creative actor’s social environment.

You could, in fact, argue that the primal function of what we now call narrative was a modeling of causal / predictive strings. Environmental (including social) stimuli affect different individuals differently because of variables such as level of physical development, experience (surface or deep memory) and the activity of naturally occurring psychoactive agents such as sex steroids or stress‑sensitive hormones that can facilitate or inhibit specific neural structures that influence behavior.

The Adaptationist Definition

NARRATIVE involves both the process and product of assembly of particulars into a coherent whole; it is a means by which perception, thoughts, or actions of an organism [or group of organisms] communicates with themselves or others to help cope with present or potential changes in the composition and structure of its environment.

It reflects a spontaneous or elicited intensity of neural processing that can relate and integrate variables not ordinarily associated with each other.

I think there are two fundamental mechanisms that have become yoked together here:

a reality-tester: something that validates percepts –checks to see if they correspond to the real world; and

a sequencer: something that assembles percepts into coherent wholes.

When working together, these can externalize narratives to meet needs or otherwise provide an advantage to the individual or its kin.

Mechanisms. We have been brought up on Kant’s observation that “The senses cannot think. The understanding cannot see” (or sometimes, “Perception without conception is blind, while conception without perception is empty”).[ii] And the familiar advice of Bertrand Russell[iii]:

Deductive logic is useful when general premises are known, and also when they are assumed to see whether their consequences agree with experience. . . . But when it is used in practical ways, it always has to be combined with other premises which have been obtained by induction. So long as it remains pure, it is a game, like solving chess problems; it differs from such games by the fact that it has applications” (pp. 38-39).

Clearly there are two ways in which we relate to the world. But we bring some equipment to all this, and that is what I want to relate these observations to. There is, as Kathryn Morton (1984)[iv] put it, “A warp in the simian brain [which] . . . made us insatiable for patterns‑‑patterns of sequence, of behavior, of feeling‑‑ connections, reasons, causes: stories.” It is that warp– and what animates it– that I am most interested in.

For example, at a superficial level we know about cerebral functional and even morphological asymmetries:

The RIGHT hemisphere is the non-speaking hemisphere one, sensitive to simultaneous patterns such as pitch and chords in music. People with damage here also often have trouble getting the gist of narratives, they seem to lack framework, or schema, for understanding” (Donald 1991:81); while

the LEFT hemisphere is especially adept at interpreting music, speech and other sequential patterns.

Unfortunately, much of the non-scientist’s sense of the utility of this perspective has been discarded with other scraps of overgeneralized nonsense —

For a beguiling example of neural structure and function, Michael Gazzaniga and Joseph LeDoux probed the left hemisphere’s capacity for problem solving[v] – each hemisphere solved a problem, and the corresponding hand would point to the selected answer – They then asked of the subjects’ left hemispheres [recall, the one that can talk] why the left hand [controlled by the right hemisphere] was pointing to the object. “Yet quick as a flash,” Gazzaniga and LeDoux observed, “it made up an explanation.” They dubbed this “creative, narrative talent the interpreter mechanism” ( pp53-54).

Interestingly, when memory was examined, if unable to recall details, the left hemisphere –but not the right– will generate false reports. Are false memories errors in encoding (occur at the time of experience) or errors in reconstruction? – “The left hemisphere has exhibited certain characteristic that support the latter view.” –The left hemisphere excels at developing schemata and it can contextualize memories – it places memories in broader context while the right hemisphere doesn’t go much beyond the stimulus (Gazzaniga citing work of Elizabeth Phelps and colleagues).

In other words, the right hemisphere particularizes while the left hemisphere generalizes and seeks rationales even when there is none.

Sequences. The machinery of all sequential movements[vi] has in Calvin’s (1989) view, probably emerged from a ballistic movement sequencer[vii] — the brain’s construction of chained memories and actions, plans and sentences, all employing serial buffers –holding queues– in which alternative strings of schemas are “graded” by memories of similar strings and weighted for present relevance, the best of them perhaps becoming conscious. (p.262-263). Calvin quoted Darwin: “Parallel trains of thought [are the] necessary heirs of every action [and are] always running in the mind.” (M Notebook, 1838).

Dysfunctional behavior involves actions that do not satisfy or accommodate the needs of the organism.

This begs an exploration of an individual’s fitness in the evolutionary sense of survival and biological success.

“Knowledge,” which in the famous 13th century dictum of Averroes, is “ the conformity of the object and the intellect,”[viii] is referring to the particulars of the world, of the environment, as they are harmoniously integrated into or accommodated by the generalities they construct in the mind.

Another dimension of this was described by Coleridge when he spoke of “The imagination… organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses… [and thereby] gives birth to a system of symbols. . . consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors“[ix]

Narrative serves the needs of individuals in establishing their relationships to their environment, community, and even themselves. Narrative works with logic to confirm or disconfirm our mental models of the environment in which the consequences projected actions must be evaluated; but narrative, like all deductive theorizing, must be confirmed by correspondences.

In confirming a model, experience and memory alone cannot always be trusted, so we seek to establish confidence in the position of an experience in a pattern and we do this by establishing the validity and reliability[1] of a phenomenon. These aspects of beliefs necessary to one’s “truth,” are, in fact, viewed by some as the dual aspects of human intelligence. Further, this view, is consistent with ideas about naturalism that underlie the ethological approach to understanding behavior.

The knowledge of self, like all beliefs are constructed from an amalgam of two complementary processes:

Scientific truths involve both validity (external correspondences)

and reliability (internal coherence).

In cognitive development, truth is established by the continuing accommodations and integrations of correspondences and coherence (Piaget?), often mediated by the social context (Vygotsky? Social constructivists). These two dimensions are also related to dual aspects of intelligence — accordingly, Sternberg (1997) has stated that “A more intelligent, adaptive person has achieved a higher degree of external correspondence and internal coherence in his or her knowledge based and belief structures. People think unintelligently to the extent to which they make errors in achieving external correspondence or internal coherence.”[x]

Elements to be considered include

truth as an amalgam of coherence and correspondence, including the role of cognitive dissonance

determinism of beliefs, including locus of control

aestheticsas a guide to validity, including the role ofmotivationaland affectiveforces[xi]

stressas an indication of neurobehaviorally orchestrated prioritizing of adaptive needs

ANALYSIS: what kind of statements (in discourse dynamics[xii]) suggest a predominance of correspondence (external locus) and coherence (internal locus); what sorts of BALANCE is there?

So I conclude, appealing for alertness for evidence from more or less effective narratives to help reveal the relationship, if not deep identity, possibly rooted in the organization of cerebral modules responsible for processing different kinds of data, between correspondence and coherence (much of the mischief of recent years (for example Rorty Versus Searle) is from the tendency to dichotomize experience and base “reality” in one of these or the other.)

Take away a search image, a question: “What problem does narrative solve?” What need does it accommodate (up and down the Maslovian need hierarchy)?

[Ideas / comments emergent during or from presentation:

we are the products of our plots

I confessed — announcing that in recent years my favorite insights popped unbidden and unexpected during lectures (and as in dreams will be gone without a trace unless someone’s taken notes or reminds me of it after a lecture in a question). I speculated that it is because I experience some measure of stress when lecturing and that insights often emerge. I believe this can be attributable to the energizing effects of stress on the nervous system, expanding the semantic field of possible creative connections. [Possibly, even increasing the access the semantic field has to pre-verbal content]

I suggested a cascade of responses (as in a thermoregulatory stress-coping response from sensory percept to action), such that a stressor that is not yet reconciled or accommodated by coping responses moves up the hierarchy of activating neural centers until consciousness itself is breached.

mentioned that the stress response is designed to return the system to the lowest energy state Neimeyer taken with this and asked lots of questions that I couldn’t readily answer – but should!

Commented on the fact that the normal condition of the nervous system is on and that stimuli focus and shape the best channel or pathway through it- and that these pathways are often in competition with each other and that the most efficient (energy state again?) Wins!

There IS no reality but that constructed by and for the adaptive use of the mind in a specific context

Rorty [reinforced by Kuhn and Derrida] is disdainful of Searles’ position, nicknamed The “Western Rationalistic Tradition.” Among its claims is the idea that reality is independent of mind and propositions are true if they accurately reflect reality.[xiv] With Kuhn, Rorty denies that there are successively improved approximations of reality; with Hilary Putnam, Rorty believes that language penetrates so deeply into “reality” that it cannot be regarded as independent. With Kuhn, Putnam, and Derrida, Rorty feels that “it is futile to either reject or accept the idea that the real and the true are ‘independent of our beliefs’” (p180).[xv]

But my mind is not at rest –a state of affairs that Friar Roger Bacon understood: “There are two modes of knowing, through argument and experience. Argument brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but does not cause certainty nor remove the doubts in order that the mind may remain at rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience” (Opus Maius 1268).

Truth is assembled[xvi] from fragments of experience organized by a sense of pattern and sequence[xvii], probably in much the same matter as dreams[xviii]

NARRATIVE is Creative

Nick Humphrey (1976) emphasizes the “creative” aspect of intelligence: he builds on a definition of intelligence as manifest when an animal “modifies its behavior on the basis of valid inference from evidence” (and he also distinguishes “low-level” intelligence (inference based on past patterns) from “high-level” intelligence (inference based on novel conjunctions of past experiences) (p 304). As a rhetorical device he imbues a straw man with creative intellect –meaning functioning to facilitate acts of practical invention – discovery of new ways of doing things. But while important, practical application, Humphrey argues, is not as important a role for creative intellect as is holding society together.

Like the shadows of the poor souls chained in Plato’s Cave,

Idiography and Nomothesis reflect a historic concern with the distinction between approaches that emphasize natural events (naturwissenschaftliche) and those that focus on the development of ideas within the study of history (geisteswissenschaftliche)

Nomothesis (integrative), of course, cannot function alone, it must be preceded by idiography. It is from the integrated use of these two methods that adaptive action emerges. With regard to the philosopher, Rychlak’s view that the most abstract conceptualizations applicable to knowledge is from the “dialectic” (rather than “demonstrative”) tradition, Marceil (1977) believes the Kantian view that “In one form or another, the contrast between the demonstrative and dialectical traditions had manifested itself in every issue in every age, because such is the nature of human thought itself.”[xix] (p. 1053), and thus the nature of human inquiry and science.

The Skilled Charioteer of the Phaedrus[2], managing the unruly dark horse of id yoked to the silver horse of ego

The most recent expressions of duality have, in neurobiology, represented bold leaps of the imagination off the springboard of neuromodularity. The brain itself has been viewed as possessing regions that are dominated by integrative functions associated (however superficially) with evolutionarily primitive –animal– functions and those associated with the more recently evolved functions often clustered under the rubric, “uniquely human.”

Confidence: Scientists that explore the boundaries of what is known of the world are especially wary. They are often confronted with information for which there is little or no precedent to guide their judgment about the meaning of their data. For example, having an emotional investment in a particular outcome of an experiment is a notorious source of unconscious bias. The objectivity of a researcher is highly admired as is their efforts to assure the validity and reliability of their data.

VALIDITY of data refers to its accuracy and specificity, as well as its applicability to the question being asked.

a. selection of variables (sometime subconscious?) Is the experiment a good “model of nature” (EXPLAIN:

“THE EXPERIMENT IS THE ABSTRACT ART FORM OF THE SCIENTIST”)

b. controls and variables (dependent and independent variables)

Field and Laboratory Reciprocity

TC Schneirla advocates the view that there is no clear distinction between careful field studies and simple controlled experiments.

Sampling decisions in the field are a level of abstraction just as the configuration of a laboratory set‑up is. Lab set‑ups are generally designed to test the consequences of a particular configuration making it DEDUCTIVE; Gathering data with no preconceptions is INDUCTIVE. In the real world these two strategies INFORM EACH OTHER.

They contribute differentialy to

INTERNAL VALIDITY (the validity of an assertion is more‑or‑less limited to the sample)

and

EXTERNAL VALIDITY (the validity of an assertion can be more‑or‑less generalized to other cases)

==================================================================

Howard Bloom’s comments on Gazzaniga’s “narrator”:

Our conscious “narrator” is largely verbal, but allow me to enter a side track: said “narrator” has a very powerful visual/motor element, or so it seems to me. The visual and motor element explain why our notion of “understanding” (to stand under– a motoric term) something involves “grasping” it (a motoric verb) with a sense of “enlightenment” (a visual noun). In other words, we feel (motor/sensory) we understand when we have successfully applied a visual/motor metaphor to whatever may have perplexed us. One good example is the metaphor of particle and wave for light. We can see and feel the properties of waves within our mind. We can also see and feel the properties of a particle–a hand-fitting stone or a billiard ball. Both our metaphors–wave and particle– fit and fail completely to fit light. So we are confused. We have no visual/motor experience which allows us to grasp something with both these properties. Rather than acknowledge that light is a form of reality with no current analog in our visual/motor world, we claim that the failing is in nature, not in us. We say that light has a dualistic property–it is two things at once. Frankly, I suspect it’s one, not two, but that one is beyond the grasp of our current visual/motor metaphors. Note that I’ve first evoked the visual/motoric model as an initial means of communicating from my conscious narrator to yours. Then I’ve translated that “vision” into words. The narrator has two components–the visual/motoric and the verbal. Since visual systems are contained in one brainmesh, motoric systems in another, and verbal abilities in yet another, I’d suspect that the neurophysiology of the “conscious narrator” involves a convergence of three brain systems. The neuroscientists in our group, Ted Coons (discoverer of many of the functions of the hypothalamus) and Ralph Holloway might be able to say more about the possible correlates in cerebral morphology than I can.

One element of the “narrator” is verbal. Gazzaniga calls it the “narrator” because, as Bill Benzon, Russ Genet, Francis Steen, and the post-modernists have implied in their work, narrative, the construction of stories, is a critical element of “consciousness.” [suggests that since “one of the things we use stories for is self-aggrandizement. . . . .[the] parade [of] self-glorifying narratives before a woman’s eyes. In the initial conversations which form a part of the courtship ritual, men show off and talk incessantly. Popular books and magazines advise the woman who wants to “catch” a man to let the dolt drone on and on, showing just how many eyelets his plumage contains.[in other words,] Male narratives are very much a sexual display mechanism.

Women are just as anxious to take credit for and justify their actions internally and externally as men. They do it, as men do, through narrative. But their narrative structure differs from the heroic epics-of-the-self composed by men.

In addition, women must have sexual display mechanisms in order to attract the man with the best genes and the ability to offer the greatest resources and the most security. The precise nature of female display is subtly different in many ways from the braggadocio of men.

Even animals far down the totem pole from man depend on vocalizations for cooperative resource gathering, protection, and bonding within the group. One example: studies of marmoset babies demonstrate that like humans, their adult utterances are preceded by a distinct form of what social communication specialist Charles T. Snowdon calls “babbling.” Snowdon’s research reveals that the more a marmoset infant vocalizes, the more it babbles, the more hugging and caring it gets from adults, and the more welcome it is in gangs of its peers. So the need to vocalize almost certainly precedes the dawn of humanity by quite a stretch of time. Its use for social bonding has been shown in dolphins, kangaroo rats, dwarf lemurs, and starlings, among others. In addition, the meaningful nature of that vocalization has been demonstrated in non-humans by Snowdon, by Cheney and Seyfarth, and many others. Perhaps even some animals have a form of consciousness dependent on internal representations of their display and communicative utterances, who knows?

“Scientists are building explanatory structures, telling stories which are scrupulously tested to see if the stories are about real life.” (Peter Medawar)[xx]

“we are searching for coherence and continuity; as a result we tend to minimize anything which interrupts the ‘flow’ of the narrative. Because we are searching for narrative truth, we are always attempting to write the best possible ‘story’ from the available data…” (D.P. Spence. 1982.Psychoanal Q)[xxi]

ENDNOTES

[1]VALIDITY of data refers to its accuracy and specificity, as well as its applicability to the question being asked.; RELIABILITY refers to data’s precision, consistency, and appropriate resolution

[2] In Phaedrus, inspiration is as important as formal rules: http://www.evansville.edu/~tb2/plato/phdr.html

[1]. I wish I said that, but Steve Jones did –and was quoted by David Concar to explain why he regarded Daniel Dennett as “a veritable factory of impure thoughts.”in his review of a Daniel Dennett collection in New Scientist 25 April 1998:48

[vi]. William H. Calvin (1983) identified “precise throwing” as a primal adaptive need and suggested that the precision needed for throwing rocks at prey was accommodated by “paralleled timing neurons” that were able — by virtue of their organization– to “overcome the usual neural noise limitations via the law of large numbers.” This indicates “that enhanced throwing skill could have produced a strong selection pressure for any evolutionary trends that provided additional timing neurons. This enhanced timing circuitry may have developed secondary uses for language reception and production.”

“Neural machinery for motor sequencing.” “Judging from the delight which infants and young children take in throwing and hammering, and from right‑handedness being strongest for such tasks, the neural machinery for rapid manual‑brachial movements may have been under substantial selection at some time in evolution probably in hominid evolution, as these features are far more pronounced in humans than chimpanzees. Here I report that throwing spears or small rocks requires an unusual timing accuracy beyond the known accuracy of single neurons, and that the only known solution to the problem (the Law of Large Numbers) requires large increases in the numbers of neurons applied to the task. This emergent property of parallel timing circuits has implications not only for brain size but for brain reorganization, as another way of increasing the numbers of timing neurons is to temporarily borrow them from elsewhere in the brain, perhaps switching them into the throwing circuitry as one “gets set” to throw.”

“One method for increasing the timing precision beyond that of the individually imprecise neurons is to use redundancy, a method whose use may be seen on the voyage of the Beagle where 22 chronometers were used to reckon longitude precisely from local noon. Enright (1980a,b) examines the properties of a simple neural circuit for decreasing the variability of a circadian oscillator, addressing the problem of individual pacemaker neurons’ periods having a much larger standard deviation (SD) than the overall organism’s circadian behavior. Essentially, the many primary timers in the first stage could feed a summating neuron; not until a critical number (e.g., 30%) of first‑stage neurons have fired does the second‑stage neuron discharge. Computer simulations show that the times to second‑stage discharge vary much less than does the firing time of any first stage neuron: the resulting SD is reduced from the SD of the N primary timers by a factor of the square root of N. Clay & DeHaan (1979) show exactly this decline in SD when observing clumps to embryonic heart cells beating in culture: the more electrically‑coupled cells in the cluster, the more rhythmic the beat. Even though the equivalent circuit is quite different from Enright’s, the result is the same. Hence fine timing precision can be an emergent property of parallel neural circuits.”

“That precision timing capabilities correlate with bigger brains can be seen from the animals with some of the largest brains (relative to body weight), which are the mormyriform fish (Bullock, Orkland & Grinnell 1977); they engage in precise timing for electrocommunication between individuals. Sonar in chiroptera and Cetacea involves a high order of precision timing; they also have among the largest of mammalian brain/body ratios. Note, however, that this does not imply a backward correlation: all animals with big brains do not show present‑day evidence of a precision timing skill exposed to selection pressure. The location of the extra timing neurons may be midbrain or cerebellum, as in the cases just cited, but there is also some likelihood that premotor cortex is involved in humans.

“Secondary Uses of Timing Circuits. Hammering uses most of the same manual‑brachial motions as does throwing. One might suppose that better circuitry for throwing would improve hammering skills; indeed, judging from female chimpanzee nutcracking skills (Boesch & Boesch, 1981), skillful hammering may have preceded precision throwing. While throwing is of primary interest in hominids because of its immediate exposure to selection pressures and long growth curve, the motor sequencing neural machinery is hypothesized to have additional secondary uses (Calvin. 1982a, 1983): language, memory, and motor mechanisms of the dominant hemisphere have many important interrelationships (Ojemann, 1982). In particular, motor sequencing lateralizations in the dominant hemisphere are thought to provide a possible foundation for language specializations. Ojemann & Mateer (1979) show that the core of the peri‑Sylvian language cortex is a region involved with both phoneme discrimination and with oral‑facial motor sequencing (as in mimicking a series of facial expressions. Deficits in manual sequencing with either hand are often associated with aphasia produced by strokes damaging this same general region of the dominant hemisphere (Mateer & Kimura, 1977, 1982), raising the issue of sequencer machinery shared by manual and oral‑facial tasks (Cai%,in, 1982a; Ojemann, 1982).

“Temporal lobe timing specializations? The temporal lobe is a region of human brain which is unusually prone to seizure activity (as is motor strip), and one particularly refractory to improvements in anticonvulsants (which are often thought to augment inhibitory mechanisms). Because so much of our knowledge of the perisylvian region suggests specialization for timing and sequencing, it may be that the epileptic tendencies are a side‑effect of, literally, “reverberating circuits” ‑ that this region is a sympathetic oscillator (in the engineering, not the neurological, sense) which reproduces rhythmic interictal and ictal activity that might originate elsewhere. For example, from media] temporal structures damaged at birth by herniating (Wvler & Bolender, 1983).

The throwing theory for encephalization must be viewed from the essential background of Miocene and Pliocene developments, particularly hominoid reproductive strategy and the carry‑while‑gathering aspect of bipedality, as in the theory recently put forward by Lovejoy (1981). Possible Pleistocene interrelationships between handedness, tool‑making, and language are discussed by Montagu (1976) and Calvin (1982a, 1983). In particular. Lee (1979, appendix E) has noted how throwing could give rise to a need for the carrying bag, a key hominid invention.

Though the throwing theory suggests a continuous selection pressure. punctuated evolution may mean that such selection pressures operate most rapidly and effectively upon small, geographically isolated, inbreeding populations near the time of speciation (see Mayr, 1982; Eldredge & Tattersall, 1982), rather than upon established species with large and widespread numbers to buffer and stabilize the genome via a well‑stirred gene pool. Thus, even if the main population did not rely upon throwing for subsistence, throwing’s usefulness in marginal habitats could have episodically shaped the genome.

One of the final steps in hominid evolution has been the tripling of hominid brain volume in the last several million years (Jerison, 1973; Holloway, 1976; Cronin et al., 1981). As Lovejoy (1981) notes, most other important hominid features may have been well‑established before the great encephalization; with the exception of language, they may not be parallel developments with brain enlargement. And, important as they are to humans, it has been difficult to see how bipedalism, tool‑making, problem‑solving intelligence, culture, altruism, and the two‑parent family could have rapidly driven encephalization: each occurs to some degree in various smaller‑brained animals without having produced a notable growth spurt.

“Thus a bigger brain could have been under continuing selection for several million years based on ever‑improving throwing skills, with the size requirement escalating in power‑law relationship to precision. Unlike hypertrophy with use, there is no reason to presume that such enlargement is restricted to the part of cerebral cortex used for timing sequences ‑ a simple genetic tendency towards global enlargement of neocortex seems a more likely postulate. Such a simple scheme for larger brains is neoteny, with selective slowing of some developmental rates retaining the juvenile brain/body size ratio (Gould, 1977) as well as some of the behavioral plasticity of juveniles. By arresting somatic growth at ‑ by ancestors’ standards ‑ a juvenile form, adults would come to have the larger juvenile brain/body ratio. Nonspecific enlargement suggests that selection for throwing success could enhance other cortically‑based abilities as a by product or exaptation, e.g., increasing intelligence in general and language in particular, because of shareable timing‑sequencing circuits. In this sense, perhaps bigger brains for hominid precision throwing promoted human intelligence and language, much as feathers for reptilian thermoregulation are thought (Ostrom, 1974) to have set the stage for bird flight.

“There emerges from this view of our brain, with its relentless reorganization and enlargement for ever more precise pitching, some glimpses of the neural foundations on which we construct our utterances and think our thoughts. The brain may have begun precisely uncocking the elbow while hammering nuts in the tropics. Overextended on the Ice Age frontiers, however, our ancestors staved off starvation according to their inborn throwing abilities. Faster and faster was always better and better. Those with bigger and better organized brains survived with the aid of the Law of Large Numbers; eventually even their babies came to hammer and throw instinctively.

From such an evolutionary ratchet jacking up brain size, there arose unbidden our own brain of unbounded potential. In basketball to tennis, this mosaic brain expresses its ancient pleasure in precisely timing a sequence. Transcending its origins, our brain can now create novel sequences using grammar and music, even contemplate how our enlarged consciousness evolved and is evolving.”

(from William H. Calvin 1983. A Stone’s Throw and its Launch Window: Timing Precision and its Implications for Language and Hominid Brains. Journal of Theoretical Biology 104, 121‑135)

“While throwing is of primary interest in hominids because of its immediate exposure to selection pressures and long growth curve, the motor sequencing neural machinery is hypothesized to have additional secondary uses (Calvin. 1982a, 1983): language, memory, and motor mechanisms of the dominant hemisphere have many important interrelationships (Ojemann, 1982). In particular, motor sequencing lateralizations in the dominant hemisphere are thought to provide a possible foundation for language specializations. Ojemann & Mateer (1979) show that the core of the peri‑Sylvian language cortex is a region involved with both phoneme discrimination and with oral‑facial motor sequencing (as in mimicking a series of facial expressions. Deficits in manual sequencing with either hand are often associated with aphasia produced by strokes damaging this same general region of the dominant hemisphere (Mateer & Kimura, 1977, 1982), raising the issue of sequencer machinery shared by manual and oral‑facial tasks (Cai%,in, 1982a; Ojemann, 1982).

“Temporal lobe timing specializations? The temporal lobe is a region of human brain which is unusually prone to seizure activity (as is motor strip), and one particularly refractory to improvements in anticonvulsants (which are often thought to augment inhibitory mechanisms). Because so much of our knowledge of the perisylvian region suggests specialization for timing and sequencing, it may be that the epileptic tendencies are a side‑effect of, literally, “reverberating circuits” ‑ that this region is a sympathetic oscillator (in the engineering, not the neurological, sense) which reproduces rhythmic interictal and ictal activity that might originate elsewhere. For example, from media] temporal structures damaged at birth by herniation (Wvler & Bolender, 1983).

At least one of the functions of language is to communicate meanings from speakers to hearers, and sometimes those meanings enable the communication to refer to objects and states of affairs in the world that exist independently of language.

Truth is a matter of the accuracy of representation

Knowledge is objective

Logic and rationality are formal [“ two kinds of reason: theoretical reason, which aims at what is reasonable to believe, and practical reason, which aims at what is reasonable to do.” but in Searle’s view it is important that “they do not by themselves tell you what to believe or what to do.” “Logic does not by itself tell you what to believe. It only tells you what must be the case, given that your assumptions are true . . .” (Searle p 207)

[xv]. But there are bad guys. The America Council of Learned Societies published a document stating that “. . . claims of disinterest, objectivity, and universality are not to be trusted, and themselves tend to reflect local historical conditions”. And Rorty agrees with Searle that the notion that the University has no need of concepts is “disinterest” and “objectivity” is dreadful. But that objectivity and disinterest can only be explained by reference to function, to “the good which these universities do, their role in keeping democratic government and liberal institutions alive and functioning.” Not by “reference to the notion of ‘correspondence to mind-independent reality.’” (p. 181). Rorty, in short, is convinced that we will be more honest and clearheaded if we replace epistemological justification with socio-political justifications

Rorty points out that where Searle feels that if we do not believe in mind-independent reality, one can believe in and insist upon objectivity, he responds that “nobody ever said that there was no such thing as objective truth ad validity. . . . [but] that you gain nothing for the pursuit of such truth by talking about the mind-dependence or mind-independence of reality” (p. 183-184). Objectivity is not about corresponding to objects, it is about connections with other subjects –“intersubjectivity.” “What Kuhn, Derrida, and I believe is that it is pointless to ask whether there really are mountains or whether it is merely convenient for us to talk about mountains” –are neutrinos real or are they heuristic fictions (p. 184).

[xvii]. The Throwing Madonna’s sequencer. The machinery of all sequential movements has in Calvin’s (1989) view, probably emerged from a ballistic movement sequencer — the brain’s construction of chained memories and actions, plans and sentences, all employing serial buffers –holding queues– in which alternative strings of schemas are “graded” by memories of similar strings and weighted for present relevance, the best of them perhaps becoming conscious. (p.262-263). Calvin quoted Darwin: “Parallel trains of thought [are the] necessary heirs of every action [and are] always running in the mind.” (M Notebook, 1838).

“Might stringing things together be a core facility of the brain,” Calvin asks (1994), one commonly useful to language, storytelling, planning, games, and ethics? If so, natural selection for any of these talents might augment their shared neural machinery, so that an improved knack for syntactical sentences would automatically expand planning abilities, too. Such carryover is what Charles Darwin called functional change in anatomical continuity, distinguishing it from gradual adaptation.” Secondary uses of the core sequencing ability would be music and dance, but at the heart of this “sequencer” may well be the need for precision planning needed by ballistic movements such as throwing. Or hammering.

Calvin also argued that intelligence is the result of a core brain specialization that underlies language, planning of hand movements, music, and dance (1994). This core ability would involve the ability to juggle multiple ideas simultaneously (as in analogy questions) and versatility (that an omnivore might profit from) and find them serving social needs brilliantly, especially when enjoying an extended opportunity to learn in a socially tolerant family setting before facing the challenges of non-kin in the real world.

Is there a candidate for such a neural sequencer? Calvin nominates the premotor and prefrontal cortices and the lateral language areas because, as he points out, left hemisphere damage that causes aphasia also creates difficulty in executing novel hand-arm sequences (apraxia). Also, a nearby left lateral perisylvian region apparently specialised for listening to sound sequences also controls oral-facial motor sequences.

Sequencing –and the foresight needed for safety since once initiated many sequences cannot be easily stopped– should be yoked together, and this may, in Calvin’s view, be the source of the entire “high end of intelligence and consciousness” – a cerebral player of mental games to “shape up quality before acting.”

[xviii]. How we dream can give clues as to why we dream. Given the truth of evolution, the countless descents with modification, the reality of behavioral fossils embedded in our brains as genetically orchestrated dispositions to behave one way or another, the pathological hypertrophies or atrophies of selected aspects of the dream machine that thereby highlight their potential function — all suggest why.

Could the assembly of dreams mirror the assembly of all coherent sequences? Simply handicapped by a much more limited repertoire of elements to assemble.

[xix]. Demonstrative thought, associated with Aristotle, is regarded as a cornerstone of modern science and emphasizes the linearity of events and the idea that nature is best explained through its individual constituents, while the dialectical tradition emphasizes nonlinear, multidirectionality of the world which is thus best understood through conceptual understanding of patterns (Marceil’s reading of Rychlak 1968 chap. 1, and p. 458) Al Burstein, at breakfast today (February 6, 1999) says that both demonstrative and dialectical traditions are within the integrative/nomotheitic tradition (I think I keep mistking nomothesist and idiography because by “nomo” I keep thinking of the “naming of particulars”